Zakula: Beloved Companion

3: Farewell

"Retaro is coming, Retaro is coming," a girl dressed in white whispered. She quietly made her way into a large, colorful tent. Inside stood a young man, clad in the fur of a white wolf. The girl followed him as he stepped out.

The man in the white wolf pelt stepped before a bridge made of interlocking roots, leading across a river. Countless people waited on the other side, all dressed in white, all cheering his arrival. They sang a song about flying far above the world.

On the other side was a beautiful garden full of flowers and honeybees. The man had turned into a little boy with a white wolf pelt, playing with others in the shadow of a large blossoming tree. It had four faces carved into the trunk on four sides, all painted in bright colors. A tiger, a mammoth, a wolf and a dragon.

Suddenly, a puppy with blue eyes and brown fuzz came running towards Karelias. Everything else vanished. The puppy ran him over and licked the dreamer's face.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karelias woke up, quietly laughing into the furs he had been sleeping on. Then he suddenly stopped. "Armas is dead, why am I laughing?" he muttered to himself. That puppy from his dream, it was Armas and it was not him. The little one did not look like his beloved companion, but he had the same eyes.

The exact same eyes.

He looked across the guest hut to the basket Armas had spent his last months in. Karelias watched and watched, waiting for the old mouflon pelt to slowly move up and down. But it did not happen. Today would be the funeral.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the eve of that day, Karelias came out of the guest hut carrying Armas in the same fur bag he had brought him here with. Old Ardanas, Irida, Finas and Okuna stood near the great campfire, next to the terracotta urn the fairies had made.

By now, it was painted in bright white, same as Armas' fur. Colorful, intricate geometric patterns wrapped all around the clay paws and tail to ward off evil spirits. Irida held the lid of the large urn, modeled to look like Armas' head. It even had blue eyes painted on. Blue eyes without the fog.

Karelias' heart clenched when he saw it. The big smile his beloved companion always had. But when he looked down to the little brother he cradled in his arms like a baby, there was no such thing.

Carefully, he lowered Armas into the urn, laying him to rest on a bed of autumn leaves. One last time, Karelias tucked him in. One last time, he caressed Armas' ears, somehow expecting the dog to move. He did not. Karelias gulped, a quiet whimper escaping his mouth.

Then he put the bag with the ground meat he would have fed Armas had he lived longer into the urn. Provisions for his journey to the other side. Karelias pulled out the old mammoth ivory rattle his dog always loved so much. He looked at it for a while, hands shaking.

"Keep it," Ardanas gently patted him on the back. "You need something to remember him."

Karelias said nothing. He just slowly nodded and put the rattle back in his pocket. While Finas and Okuna filled the urn with tree sap, Karelias took the lid from Irida. She gently laid her hands on his. But this was a type of pain fairies could not just stop with a spell.

For a moment, Karelias looked at his little brother lying there, covered in the blood of Inari. He took in this last image and then put the lid on without saying a word. There it stood, a large terracotta urn shaped like a fluffy, happy dog looking at him. Irida wrapped a few cords around the urn's hooks to keep it closed.